susan jean robertsonFront End Dev writing about all things webbishhttps://susanjeanrobertson.com
Hawthorne on Painting<p>I’m not terribly good about reading non fiction and I’ve got quite a backlog of books I’ve bought on art just waiting for me to pick them up, so I finally did with this slim volume. Charles Hawthorne isn’t a painter that I’m super familiar with, but <a href="http://www.powells.com/book/hawthorne-on-painting-9780486206530/61-0">Hawthorne on Painting</a> was recommended by <a href="http://www.lizsteel.com">Liz Steel</a> and so I picked it up, hoping for some helpful thoughts.</p>
<p>I wasn’t disappointed. The book is made up of advice he gave to students as he taught along with notes people must have taken as he spoke about painting. His wife and son put it together into sections based on subject matter. It’s an easy read, but filled with a lot of profound things about use of color, how to see your subject matter, and how to think about approaching drawing and painting. His emphasis on color and spots of color also fits in perfectly with the watercolor class I’ve been taking by Liz Steel, so it was great to read it as I went through the class.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in thinking more about making your own art, how you see the world while doing it, and some really practical advice on painting, I highly recommend it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’ll be surprised to see how little drawing you need if you <em>make</em> the spot of color and approximate the shape—then the drawing is more real and you won’t need the kind you learn indoors. (p 29)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Funny thing about painting, you don’t know what makes it right but you know when it’s wrong. (p 39)</p>
</blockquote>
Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/hawthorne-on-painting/
https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/hawthorne-on-painting/Everything Easy is Hard Again<p>“Let’s be more like that tortoise: diligent, direct, and purposeful. The web needs pockets of slowness and thoughtfulness as its reach and power continues to increase. What we depend upon must be properly built and intelligently formed. We need to create space for complexity’s important sibling: nuance. Spaces without nuance tend to gravitate towards stupidity. And as an American, I can tell you, there are no limits to the amount of damage that can be inflicted by that dangerous cocktail of fast-moving-stupid.”</p>
<p class="small">This piece resonated with me a lot, it's something I've been thinking about as well and I've even <a href="/writing/people-and-tooling/">written about it</a>. I'm not nostalgic for the way the web used to be, but I am, increasingly, concerned about the people we leave out with the complexity we've created. There are a lot of hard things on the web right now, this is a small piece that affects a lot of us every day in our work and, I think, makes our work less efficient and less accessible.</p>
Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-again/
Water Rat of Wenchai<p>I’ve been a bit mystery crazy lately. We’re currently watching the Poirot series and I’ve been watching some other British mysteries on Netflix but this past week I decided I wanted to read one and picked up the first Ava Lee novel by Ian Hamilton, <a href="http://www.powells.com/book/water-rat-of-wanchai-an-ava-lee-novel-9781250032270/18-0">Water Rate of Wenchai</a>.</p>
<p>Ava Lee is a forensic accountant who is also skilled in martial arts and goes after people to get money back they’ve stolen from her clients. She is a really interesting and great character and I can’t wait to read more in the series. Lee lives in Toronto, but was born in Hong Kong, and she is adept at traveling the world and tracking money. She’s also very adept at taking care of herself in dangerous situations.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that these books are somewhat formulaic, but to be honest, right now with the news of the world, escaping into that is what I need. A friend of mine used to call certain types of books, tv books, meaning it was what he read instead of watching TV for relaxation. Ava Lee fits that bill perfectly. In this first book she traveled from Toronto to Hong Kong to Thailand to Guyana to the British Virgin Islands and the last portion of the book was hard to put down.</p>
<p>I’ve already got the second book on hold at the library because I can’t wait to read more about Ava’s adventures.</p>
Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/water-rat-of-wenchai/
https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/water-rat-of-wenchai/Bridge to Terabithia<p>I’ve been feeling a bit lost on what to read lately, nothing on my “to read” shelf is appealing, so I finally read this kids book that I never read when I was a kid. <a href="http://www.powells.com/book/bridge-to-terabithia-a-harper-classic-9780062658746/62-0">Bridge to Terabithia</a> is a classic and it’s a great story, as I found. I loved the way the kids portrayed were so realistic and also so honest.</p>
<p>I grew up in a very small town when until I was 10 (population ~600 or so) and there was so much in this book I could relate to. I especially loved how the friends interacted, how, without realizing it, they were saving each other. It isn’t easy being the odd one in a small town, as I can attest to, and this book portrays the ways in which two oddballs come to be friends.</p>
<p>This would be a super great book to read aloud with a kid, but also, if you want a good story that will occupy an afternoon, I recommend it.</p>
Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/bridge-to-terabithia/
https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/bridge-to-terabithia/"This Is Serious": Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral<p>“There’s another theory floating around as to why Facebook cares so much about the way it’s impacting the world, and it’s one that I happen to agree with. When Zuckerberg looks into his big-data crystal ball, he can see a troublesome trend occurring. A few years ago, for example, there wasn’t a single person I knew who didn’t have Facebook on their smartphone. These days, it’s the opposite. This is largely anecdotal, but almost everyone I know has deleted at least one social app from their devices. And Facebook is almost always the first to go. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other sneaky privacy-piercing applications are being removed by people who simply feel icky about what these platforms are doing to them, and to society.”</p>
<p class="small">The backlash on social media platforms is beginning and at the same time those same platforms are getting more and more desperate to keep our eyes glued to them. I don't have a Facebook account, but I do use Instagram a bit, and I'm bombarded with it wanting me to do something to make it easier for the app to bug me every time I open it up. These things have the opposite effect on me as I'm now close to leaving the platform altogether.</p>
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-downward-spiral
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Best Life Advice<p>I love Le Guin’s writing and this is a great compilation of a bunch of various quotes from her books, speeches, and more. Well worth a read through if you’re unfamiliar with her work.</p>
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800http://lithub.com/ursula-k-le-guins-best-life-advice/
Hostage Situation<p>“Designers like to talk about how they finally have a seat at the table. It’s an attractive idea, especially since companies have started to build internal design teams rather than outsource to agencies. But sometimes it feels as if designers have been tricked into thinking they have a seat, when in fact they’ve been taken hostage, only to develop Stockholm syndrome.”</p>
<p class="small">Interesting thoughts from Paul about how we choose who we work for and what that means in the larger sense of ethics and the state of the internet.</p>
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://paulrobertlloyd.com/2018/02/corporate_designers
Against craft<p>“But I also worry about how shallow the tech community’s interpretation of craft is; how aesthetic and performative we’ve made it. We buy handmade holsters for our Sharpies. Our conferences offer wood-turning workshops. Our dress code somehow blends hipster fetishisation of a blue-collar past with the minimalism of the urban rich: we yearn to connect with a handmade, physical world (perhaps to compensate for the ephemerality of our materials), but above all we must display our appreciation of quality, and hence our taste. Craft underpins how we dress and even behave. It’s easy to see where this leads: these identity performances become acts of gatekeeping. Those who look the part and fit the groove are given attention, hired, and respected. The rest are filtered out. Craft as class warfare.”</p>
<p class="small">I love this piece and the way in which Bowles equates our talk of craft with class. Also the Chachra piece he links to is a fave that I return to again and again.</p>
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://www.cennydd.com/writing/against-craft
A little advice.<p>“I don’t just want to see the quality of your final mockup, your finished set of templates: I want to learn how you got there. I want to read what worked, what didn’t, and the decisions you made along the way.”</p>
<p class="small">So much this. I would also add that writing and communicating are vital skills, sometimes more vital than just being able to design well or code well. And writing about your work, your thoughts, and your ideas is one way to show more of what you'd be like to with on a team.</p>
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/advice/
The Stone Sky<p>I finally finished NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, which wraps up with <a href="http://www.powells.com/book/stone-sky-broken-earth-03-9780316229241/62-0"><em>The Stone Sky</em></a>. I got a bit way laid by several library books becoming available, so this took me longer than I expected, but it’s so good, particularly the ending of the series.</p>
<p>We see Essun and her daughter attempt to right things in the world. And I’ll admit that I liked how the ending wasn’t completely definitive. There is so much in this series that helped me think about our current times; how we treat the other, how we treat the Earth, and how we think about solving hard problems.</p>
<p>And yet Jemisin doesn’t give definitive answers in the end, she hints at cooperation and hard times pushing people to find new solutions, but I’m not sure that the people left in this book will do that. She also recognizes the need to grieve, to collect yourself and care for yourself, before you move forward.</p>
<p>I never want to say too much in these reviews because I don’t want to give anything away, but this series is worth your time. Jemisin builds a fascinating world, one which I’m so glad I got to look into for a while.</p>
Wed, 24 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/the-stone-sky/
https://susanjeanrobertson.com/reading/the-stone-sky/